Strays for Thanksgiving

Friday, November 28, 2008

One of my favorite things to do is to pick up strays for Thanksgiving. Mom is always careful to clarify..."strays...you mean...well, umm. You mean people you know right?" Yeah. It's always people I know who for one reason or another don't have anything to do on Turkey day, but there have been years when I was tempted to just pick someone up off the street. Never truly brave enough, but tempted :-) I can't always find strays to bring home on Thanksgiving, but this was a truly blessed year and we had some FANTASTIC ones!

April and Matt were missionaries for a year in China and we love getting together with them over good food, or tea, or board games anyway. What better day for all of the above than Thanksgiving?

Then there's Miss Beth.

Could she be any cuter? Beth is a sign language interpreter at Juniper Elementary (a vocation that I find really fascinating for some reason) and also my dear "Michla's" new roomie! She had other invitations and chose us...how lucky are we? She did end up on the losing Taboo team, however. I hope she won't hold that against us :-)

But we had one other stray this year, and I'm sorry to all my human friends, but this particular one...was my favorite.

This little love is my new friend "Fluffy". Yes. I know Fluffy is a ridiculous name for a dear, and I was actually teasing when I started calling her that. She just stood outside our back window all afternoon in her fuzzy winter coat. She would never run when we came out or made loud noises, but just stood there looking longingly in. So as I stood at the kitchen window doing dishes I started to talk to her, like I do the strange "bird" characters that Mom and Dad get at their place too. "Oh hi Fluffy. Fluffy! You're just standing there so lonely. I'm going to call you Fluffy. Fluffy you can be my pet...are you hungry for turkey Fluffy?" And that's when the idea struck me. I grew up out here and we've had deer in the yard all my life, but never once have I had the inclination (or opportunity) to try feeding one (on anything but the newly budded spring tulips). But this little sweetie was a stray on Thanksgiving day. I couldn't resist trying. Opened the door, tossed out a carrot. She took it gladly. Tossed out another, then one more on the deck this time. By the fourth carrot I was sitting on the deck reaching my hand to her. She had the tiniest little teeth and wouldn't just snatch the carrot. She would put her little nose in my hand and lick me a few times. She likes me. The boys got to feed her a couple carrots too, but she wasn't as crazy about them. You shouldn't feed wild deer. It makes life dangerous for them around hunting season. That's sad. But I have a feeling this one has been fed before. And still, she chose our house for Thanksgiving. We were very glad to have you, Fluffy!

I'm a blessed girl, i am!

Coffee?

Friday, November 21, 2008

If you send your boys out for Friday morning coffee and they arrive home with these...
...it makes you think maybe you'll send your boys out form morning coffee again next week!

Something about Forgiveness

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I read something in Oswald this morning that sort of stuck with me. He was talking about how if we think God forgives us because He's just so good hearted and kind then we've sort of got it all wrong. The Bible doesn't support that idea, Oswald says. He says that the thing to keep in mind about forgiveness is that Christ sacrificed His life and God forgives us based on that alone...not because He's a cosmic "nice-guy". I don't deserve God's forgiveness, but if he doesn't offer it to me now, after all that was spent, it's His own Son's precious sacrifice that He's devaluing more so than even His "kind" Heavenly Father character. He will not devalue His Son's sacrifice, and so He forgives me over and over and over. Always will. Because Jesus paid. I think that's a really beautiful idea and I was glad to ponder it this morning.

And as usually happens when God's thoughts find my heart in the morning, I needed this idea by the end of the day. I have to forgive the ones who hurt me over and over and over again, daily in fact. And quite frankly, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of them. I'm sick of the pain. It's really hard to forgive someone who isn't sorry, who thinks they did nothing wrong and to keep forgiving over and over. It seems like I should be able to at least wait to do all this darn forgiveness work until they say they're sorry or at least until they stop hurting me. "But He demonstrated His own love for us in this...that while we were YET sinners, Christ died for us." Leave it to Jesus to set the bar high (grin). He paid the forgiveness bill before I was ever sorry for what I'd done. And I'm expected to at least try to be like Him, at least to try.

So there it is. I am called upon to forgive again. Somedays I'm all noble and lovely and I can say that I truly want to forgive them simply because that's the person I want to be and Christ will give me the strength. Today I can't say that. I don't want to forgive. I don't. I'm weary and I want my sorrows to vanish as if they never were at all. I feel like hating, or at least rolling my eyes in disdain. So I sit thinking I might do that for a little while (as if I'm contemplating indulging in just one more brownie) and then I remember about Oswald and how God quickened those ideas to my heart this morning. And I realize that if I decide not to forgive now, I'm not devaluing my own character or niceness as much as I'm devaluing the sacrifice of my dear Jesus. And gosh, I can't bring myself to do that, at least not on purpose. He paid so, so much to buy forgiveness, so that His Father could give it freely, so that He could give it freely, so that I could give it freely.

My Jesus, I forgive today because you do. And I'm grateful that you didn't consider it too much to pay even though I wasn't even sorry yet. I'll put your purchase to the best use I can. Today I'll forgive them because of who You are.